Crazy Oik art critic Jim
Burns tips me off about the Wyndham Lewis exhibition at the ImperialWarMuseum in Salford
(June 23 – January 1). It should
be well worth a look. Lewis was a fine artist and a prolific writer who
produced over forty books of essays and novels. Yes, he was a bit of a
Nazi, anti-gay and anti-Semitic who actually wrote in praise of Hitler
in1931 but later retracted this stance in 1939 – well we all make
mistakes. But, as a writer, was Wyndham any good? I have seven of his
works but find myself agreeing with St George (Orwell) who said “Enough
talent to set up dozens of ordinary writers has been poured into Wyndham
Lewis's so-called novels, such as Tarr or Snooty Baronet.
Yet it would be a very heavy labour to read one of these books right
through.” Yep, I’ve never been able to get past page 10 myself. As St
George continues: “Some indefinable quality, a sort of literary vitamin,
is absent from them." Yet Eliot called him the greatest English prose
stylist of the century. A good place to start is
The Essential Wyndham Lewis
edited by Julian Symons who writes: “Lewis was more greatly and
variously gifted than any of his artistic contemporaries, his
understanding deeper and his mind more audacious. He was also personally
injudicious, arrogant …and sometimes produced wretchedly slapdash work
in search of the popularity he despised.”

More
interesting, and germane to our recent preoccupations with little mags,
is the brief phenomenon of Blast – Lewis’s magazine which appeared as a
Vorticist manifesto in 1914. It disappeared just as quick in 1915 after
issue 2 (it was intended to be a quarterly). There was a war on, of
course, but that didn’t stop Cyril Connolly and John Lehman editing
little mags throughout the 1940s. Then again, unlike Lewis, neither of
those admirable aesthetes were distracted by trench warfare.

Another founding member of Vorticism was Edward Wadsworth (see cover) –
something of an oik on account of his engineering training in
Munich
(but before that he went to Fettes). William Roberts was also an acolyte
who memorialized the historic launch of Blast in his 1961 painting
The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour
Eiffel: Spring 1915 (see back
cover).
I’ve always wondered just who was who in this painting and then came
across a detailed run-down in an old copy of Ian Hamilton’s
The New Review of 1974. Paul
Overy in a piece entitled Puce Monster (WL’s description of his baby)
writes:

“[Roberts] shows the male Vorticists grouped
round a table after what has obviously been a substantial meal while the
waiter brings in champagne. Lewis, in broad-brimmed hat, and Pound, with
bouffant hair style and a trace of goatee beard, are easily
recognisable. Roberts himself, not yet 20 and the youngest of the
Vorticists, is diffidently seated with folded hands next to the
self-confident Lewis. Cuthbert Hamilton sits on a high stool at the far
left, Frederick Etchells holds a half-opened copy of the chubby pink
volume of the first Blast. The balding Edward Wadsworth is about to take
a piece of tart on a plate held out by Rudolph Stulik, the pro­prietor
of the Tour Eiffel, a frequent meeting-place of the Vorticists. Helen
Saunders and Jessica Dismorr are just coming through the door.”

This is quintessential little mag territory.
Lewis did try again in 1922 with
The Tyro which appeared in only two issues, and after that with
The Enemy (1927) which got up
to three issues. So what’s all
this got to do with the Crazy Oik? Perhaps our cover is symbolic. The
dazzle ships weren’t camouflaged to become invisible, but instead used
ideas derived from Vorticism and Cubism to confuse enemy U-boats trying
to pinpoint the direction and speed of travel. Our posh, glossy covers
may well bamboozle the innocent punter in search of an aesthetic
frisson, but once inside…

Ken
Clay April 2017

ALEXIS LYKIARD

AT 77

A heavy package, half-inch thick, thuds on the
front-door mat. It's March, the finely-printed College Yearbook's
here, Chronicling Honours, Fellowships, distinctions of all sorts,
And arcane titles dear to academics, plus the top degrees.
Provost's Report - Professor Somebody's, whose name is new to me;I
clock how young he looks, compared to me at least; Strange also, to
recall my undergraduate days, And skim these full, most fulsome,
celebratory Obits

Of various contemporaries. A vague curiosity, if
that,Seeps in as I review the faded, dreamlike details,Fragments
of fugitive events, or faces rarely seen againAfter the bright
intensity of those three, close-packed years.Herewith some names,
DOB, RIP... Nostalgia never fails:Time to forget steroids and
statins, raise a glass to mutter Cheers!

The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel: Spring 1915 -
William Roberts